


i keep a window for you (it’s always open)

by prettydizzeed



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Love Confessions, M/M, Pining, Romeo and Juliet References, Tenderness, ben wyatt voice: it’s about the bird symbolism, seriously this is the most tender thing i’ve ever written
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-24 07:43:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19719241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prettydizzeed/pseuds/prettydizzeed
Summary: He knows where this is going.They make it rather obvious, don’t they, what with theA pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life—and isn’t that something to dwell on for the next millennium, how maybe they’re crossed by the very stars he created, maybe he’s always been doing this to himself.





	i keep a window for you (it’s always open)

**Author's Note:**

> title is from “Want You In My Room” by Carly Rae Jepsen because that line gave me big r&j vibes the first time i heard it

He knows where this is going.

They make it rather obvious, don’t they, what with the _A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life_ —and isn’t that something to dwell on for the next millennium, how maybe they’re crossed by the very stars he created, maybe he’s always been doing this to himself.

It’s a deeply sweet torture to stand next to Aziraphale for this, like biting into a fruit that’s just barely past the peak of ripeness, still close enough to good that it can’t be wasted but with a sickly edge, always a breath away from rot. Fragile. They could’ve gotten seats, of course, but Crowley needs to pace; the low-level hum of panic that’s been a constant since before the Beginning has been steadily increasing in volume for the past few decades, and it helps, at least a bit, to keep moving, to sidestep in counterpart to Aziraphale’s steadiness. Makes him feel a shade more balanced.

The actors are incredible tonight, managing to keep Crowley’s eyes fixed on the stage all the way up until the masquerade scene; “She doth teach the torches to burn bright,” says Romeo, and Crowley thinks of Eden, of the sky swallowed by clouds and Aziraphale brighter than the sword he no longer had, and it’s fine, it’s fine that he glances to his left at that, just because he gives out temptation doesn’t mean he’s ever been expected not to give into it.

Aziraphale is looking ahead. Crowley doesn’t bother to thank anyone for that.

It’s an incredible force of will to keep his head from turning when Romeo, mask lowered, heedless of the consequences of recognition, proclaims, “Did my heart love ‘til now? Forswear it, sight! For I ne’er saw true beauty ‘til this night.” It’s probably not so sacrilegious coming from someone who wasn’t once intended as a vessel of Divine love, someone whose standard of beauty doesn’t encompass the original Goodness of creation, but the line still feels risky, imbued with the forbidden nature of the situation. Crowley can see the edge of Aziraphale’s jaw, the ridge of his curls, out the corner of his eye. He doesn’t do anything so obvious as cross his arms, but his fingers curl to rest against his palms, and he stops his heartbeat for just a moment, just to give it a break.

He has the space of a scene and a half before he has to pay attention to his breathing again. The masquerade scene was bad; the balcony scene is worse. Bad in that it was gorgeous, worse in that it is lovelier still—those are real flowers, he’s fairly sure, Damask roses, light and delicate along the trellis. Romeo’s voice is soft, awed, as if he’s not even aware he’s speaking, as if he can’t help but say on an exhale, “See how she leans her cheek upon her hand! O that I were a glove upon that hand, that I might touch that cheek!”

“Now that’s just not fair,” Crowley says, barely a breath, thinking of the flush across Aziraphale’s face in Rome, the practically identical thoughts he’d had then and every century since— _O that I were a ring on his finger, that I might hold some part of his hand; O that I were his reading spectacles, that I might brush the slopes of his cheekbones; O that I were his napkin, that I might touch his lips._ Romeo is ridiculous and honest and so desperate it hurts to look at him. Crowley almost wants him to stumble one of his lines so the mirror will shatter, so it becomes a fictional performance instead of a half-memory reenacted by a stranger.

The actor delivers every line without flaw. Crowley doesn’t cry at the end, but Aziraphale touches him, and it’s a near thing.

*

“You were an angel, once,” Aziraphale says, offensively hopeful, and Crowley’s corporation has the decency to listen when he forces it not to choke.

And what he wants to say is, “Call me but love, and I'll be new baptiz’d,” but what he says instead is, “That was a long time ago,” _remember, they died in the final scene and even though you knew it was coming, you gasped, and your wrist brushed mine when you raised your hand to your mouth._

What he wants to say is, they were right, this love is death-mark’d.

“There is no our side,” Aziraphale says, and Crowley, against all odds and evidence, has still believed up until now that love is a tender thing, but no, he thinks, they were right.

Too rough: Aziraphale’s ancient jacket and artifact of a body pressed into the wall, Crowley’s panic echoing in his ears, both _someone will hear you_ and _after all this time, still giving yourself excuses_ , warring flavors of terror against his tongue, not least of which because Aziraphale’s eyes flick to his mouth—

Too rude: “Alright? Good. Get in the car,” he says, too panicked, too _grasping_ to keep the whole wretched weight of it out of his tone; _tell the whole blessed world, why don’t you_ he thinks angrily at himself, and then does—

Too boisterous: harsh and begging and open in the middle of this street, and then his hands close around nothing, he steps back, his chest gaping for every stranger on the sidewalk to see in—

“And when I’m off in the stars, I won’t even think about you,” he says, and it hurts as much as if he’d crossed himself.

*

They hold hands at the end of the world—they hold hands, _O that I were a glove upon that hand, that I might_ —O that this were not the end of everything, _do you remember the last time you touched me, do you file them all away like I’ve been doing since the beginning of creation, in chronological order, color-coded based on seconds of duration_ —and Aziraphale is firm in his righteous certainty, and Crowley’s hands are trembling. _O that we were not awaiting our destruction, that I might begin to hope. O that there were not an eleven-year-old in front of us, that I might dare to assume the role of your comb and run my hands through your hair, that I might dare_ —

Aziraphale tilts his head towards him. “Here's much to do with hate, but more with love,” he murmurs, and meets Crowley’s eyes, but too briefly for Crowley to guess what he means by it.

*

Crowley opens the bedroom door for Aziraphale, presents it to him with a gesture. “There’s, ah—I can take the couch,” he says, stepping in and resting his hands against the bedpost. Aziraphale has made a beeline to the singular bookshelf in the apartment.

“I thought you didn’t read books,” he says, sounding relieved instead of offended at the apparent lie, and Crowley thinks with a sigh that he should’ve expected this to take precedence over anything so mundane as bone-deep weariness from being present for the subversion of the actual apocalypse.

“Yes, well, I’m a demon; lies are part of the job description,” he says, and Aziraphale looks so close to saying that’s bullshit that he keeps talking, because he doesn’t think he can handle Aziraphale swearing on top of everything else today. “Former job description? I’m a bit confused on that point at the moment. But, well—I haven’t read books in a few decades, would be more accurate, I suppose. Haven’t bought a new one in a century, at least.”

“Hmm,” Aziraphale says, and normally he’d still be fairly outraged at that, Crowley’s sure, but right now he’s just running his index finger reverently along each title, contemplative.

The movement pauses when he reaches _Romeo and Juliet_. He brings his thumb to rest on the top of it. Crowley clears his throat.

Aziraphale turns slowly to face him, fingers still on the book. His expression is a mix of determination and longing and relief, and Crowley would be certain he knows what he’s about to say if it weren’t so unbelievable.

“Dost thou love me?” Aziraphale asks, and Crowley’s mouth silently falls open. “I know thou wilt say ‘Ay,’” he continues, moving his arm from the shelf, taking an impossible step towards Crowley, and another, “and I will take thy word.” He raises his hand to Crowley’s jaw and skips several lines. “Swear by thy gracious self,” he murmurs, eyes locked with Crowley’s, “which is the god of my idolatry, and I'll believe thee.”

“I love you,” Crowley says, and Aziraphale nods. “I—I swear.”

“I love you, too,” Aziraphale says, thumb rubbing little circles against Crowley’s cheek, fingers curled along his neck, so gentle and solid and _sure_ that Crowley could weep with it.

“Speak again, bright angel!” Crowley says, only half teasing, and Aziraphale presses his lips to his cheek.

“I love you, my dear.” His temple. “I love you.” Just below each lens of his glasses, polite enough to not mention the tear tracks. “I love you.” He hesitates a breath away from Crowley’s mouth, so close he can feel the words against his lips when Aziraphale asks, “May I?”

“Please,” Crowley breathes, and Aziraphale kisses him.

“I need to sit down,” Crowley says several minutes later. “I—do you—” but Aziraphale is nodding, knows what he’s asking before he’s wrangled the words into a coherent form.

“Here is fine,” Aziraphale says, soft but not quite quiet, and tilts his head towards the bed.

“Right,” Crowley says faintly, and lies down on top of the covers. He should take a shower, he thinks vaguely, he feels like dirt and soot and motor oil have seeped into his very bones, but he’s not sure if he could drag himself to the bathroom, and he certainly doesn’t have the strength left for a miracle.

A washcloth manifests itself in Aziraphale’s hand. “May I?” he asks again, and Crowley nods, and closes his eyes while Aziraphale reaches forward and takes his glasses off and folds them, sets them on a bedside table. Keeps them closed as Aziraphale brings the warm cloth to his skin and rubs, firm but gentle, methodical, across his nose and cheeks and forehead and jaw, down to his neck, across to his ears. By the time Crowley opens his eyes, the cloth is cold and streaked with black. He feels raw.

Aziraphale folds it, sets it to the side, and miracles a new one, reaches for Crowley’s wrist, cleans his forearms and palms and fingers and nails until they glisten faintly, kisses his knuckles.

“Can I—” Crowley says, reaching, and Aziraphale nods, and the cloth is clean and warm again. Crowley brings it to Aziraphale’s wrist without letting their skin touch. “If I profane with my unworthiest hand,” he starts, and Aziraphale sighs.

“Oh, hush, dear,” he says, shifting to kiss Crowley’s palm. “You do wrong your hand too much.” He releases him, sits back and spreads his fingers and stays still while Crowley massages his hands. He’ll need a new manicure, Crowley thinks, and is abruptly overcome with the panic he’s been too exhausted to acknowledge.

“We—how are we going to make it out of this, angel?” he asks, pleading. “We don’t have much time.”

Aziraphale looks broken in a way Crowley’s never seen before, split open and out of answers. “I don’t know, dear boy,” he admits. “I’m sure once they’ve had a moment to regroup, it’s—it’ll be hellfire, for me, I’m sure, and—and—”

“Holy water for me,” Crowley says, wrapping his hand around Aziraphale’s and holding tight.

“Never the most creative, were they,” Aziraphale says with a brittle wince. “I don’t know,” he repeats. “I keep thinking it over, but I don’t—I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Crowley says, bringing his free hand up to cradle Aziraphale’s cheek. He’s caught on the irony of it, again, the urge to scream from his knees _I defy you, stars_ at something of his own creation.

And that’s—there’s something there, at the edge of his mind, something about a rose by any other name maintaining the same essence and how the same is true for people, something about drinking poison but cheating death.

Deny thy Father and refuse thy name.

“Aziraphale,” he says, desperate and reckless, seething towards the heavens. _I defy you._ “What if—”

*

After they’ve gone in circles about it and come out thinking it just might work, after they’ve held each other, Crowley’s face buried in Aziraphale’s neck and Aziraphale’s arms tight against his back, after lips do what hands do, sin purged and given and deemed irrelevant, they fall asleep.

Crowley wakes up first, heart chasing itself to a dozen different disastrous conclusions to the next twenty-four hours. Aziraphale wakes up smiling.

“Oh,” he murmurs, gently delighted, brushing Crowley’s hair back from his face and bringing his hand to rest at the back of his neck, “it is my love.” Crowley blushes, and Aziraphale kisses his jaw, and then it’s time to get ready.  


It’s objectively bizarre, he thinks, looking at Aziraphale in his skin, but. It just might work. Of course, it might not—he wonders briefly if their love will be reduced to the two hours’ traffic of some stage, the echo of splashes in a pool. The difference is, he supposes, that their death wouldn’t stop the rage of their respective former sides; he’s not sure anything could.

Aziraphale is about to leave.

“Can I go forward when my heart is here?” he asks, pressing his forehead to Crowley’s, and then, “You’re sure you’re going to be alright?”

“Thy kinsmen are no let to me,” Crowley says, all teeth and bravado. “It’ll be fine, angel.” He swallows. “I love you.”

“I love you,” Aziraphale says, and squeezes his hand, and walks out the door.

There’s a lark somewhere outside his window, carrying on loud enough to wake the dead.

*

“What would you say to a rose trellis?” Crowley asks, taking another sip of champagne. “At the bookshop, I mean. There’s this gorgeous variety of climbers—Eden roses, they’re called, and I thought—it would be a bit commemorative, you know?”

Aziraphale is smiling. “Yes, alright, dear,” he says, “It sounds lovely, so long as it doesn’t attract any customers.”

“Swear it won’t,” Crowley says earnestly, and turns to the window, still unused to letting Aziraphale see so far inside him. Unbeknownst to him, for the first time ever, a nightingale begins to sing in Berkeley Square; what he does notice, though, is that the street outside glimmers, paved with stars.

**Author's Note:**

> i’m on tumblr @campgender if you want to join my constant crying about good omens


End file.
